A virtual Yosemite experience just arrived in San Francisco's Ghirardelli Square - SFGATE

That's what I learned connected a reticent caller travel to the tourer magnet that is Ghirardelli Square to try "Experience Yosemite," a virtual world gimmick that bills itself arsenic "San Francisco's champion cinematic experience!" (exclamation constituent included).

Curiously, nary 1 wants to spot that superlative offering erstwhile I get astatine GamedayVR connected a Friday afternoon. The cavernous warehouse is wholly deserted prevention for the lone employee, whose caput is buried successful his smartphone. Inside the abstraction are much than a twelve egg-shaped chairs with plush reddish lining, an unexplained NASA abstraction suit and 2 billboards for "Experience Yosemite," 1 with the unattributed "best cinematic experience!" punctuation and different that calls it "the aboriginal of cinema."

I cheque into my "future of cinema" acquisition and americium escorted to my virtual world chair. The assemblage kid who's successful complaint tells maine not to enactment my backpack against the ovum due to the fact that it volition beryllium moving. (Spoiler: It ends up moving very, very, precise little, beloved reader.)

I descend into the comfy ovum seat and enactment connected my virtual world headset. For the adjacent 15 minutes, I'm subjected to 1 of the saddest cinematic experiences of my life.

It's hard to adjacent explicate however atrocious the graphics for "Experience Yosemite" are. They look determination betwixt 1992's Wolfenstein 3D and 1993's Myst — 2 early-days machine games that were amusive contempt their rudimentary, 30-year-old 3D graphics. You'll bask those portion your ovum ever truthful somewhat tilts backmost and guardant from clip to time, giving you a slow-motion mentation of 1 of those integrative horses extracurricular the market store you wage a 4th to ride.

A look wrong GamedayVR, a Ghirardelli Square store that hosts "Experience Yosemite," a virtual circuit of Yosemite.

Grant Marek/SFGATE

I initially thought this would beryllium thing similar 1 of Oculus' "Star Wars" games, wherever you tin interact with and determination astir an incredibly chill situation freely, but it's thing similar that successful immoderate way. Instead, you're conscionable watching a bittersweet Yosemite movie wherever you tin crook somewhat near and close to spot a spot much of the screen.

Not lone is the movie sad, though; it's besides extremely confusing. It jumps astir from John Muir touring Yosemite with Theodore Roosevelt successful 1903 (you look successful connected a campfire gathering betwixt them wherever they don't move), to Native Americans' past with the onshore (you extremity up successful a acheronian cave for a bully 3 minutes, and the surface repeatedly displays antithetic baskets), to escaped solo climber Alex Honnold scaling Yosemite's 3,200-foot El Capitan without a enactment successful 2017, to Ansel Adams taking photos determination successful 1958. There's nary chronology to immoderate of it, and astir apt the astir melodramatic infinitesimal of the full happening is erstwhile Adams uses a reddish filter for an El Capitan photograph alternatively of a yellowish one. There's besides a truly peculiar infinitesimal wherever the movie shows a fashionable slacklining spot, and the pistillate connected the slackline someway really looks worse than Meta’s leg-less VR people.

At respective points during the 15 minutes, I tin besides perceive radical slamming car doors successful existent beingness successful Ghirardelli Square — due to the fact that of people I can.

The lone metallic lining of the full happening is that the filmmakers someway convinced Bryan Cranston to bash the voiceover.

"Experience Yosemite" is lone $10 cheaper than the Yosemite National Park entranceway interest for a azygous car ($35) if you spell alone, and hilariously, there's a escaped tract called virtualyosemite.org that is someway worlds amended than this abomination. If you're a tourer visiting San Francisco wondering if this acquisition is worthy spending $25 connected for each subordinate of your family, no, it is not.

Might I alternatively suggest doing what I did aft I finished subjecting myself to this: I walked implicit to Buena Vista Cafe, which is connected the aforesaid block, and enjoyed a nonvirtual Irish coffee, unequivocally 1 of the precise champion San Francisco experiences.